Note 21 — GHÁNAH — Aúdaghost — Aúlíl.

The Harib of Caillié, who was not fortunate in seizing the sounds of the Arabic and Berber languages, ought probably to be Gharíb غريب M. D’Avezac (Bulletin de la Soc. de Géog. 1834, tom. II. p. 169) proposes reading ʿArib; but since the tribe of the Gharíb is mentioned in M. Gråberg af Hemsö’s list of Berber names (Journal Roy. Geog. Soc. vol. VII. p. 255) and Marmol (tom. III. fol. 9,) places a tribe named Garib in the neighbourhood of Tatta, we cannot avoid concluding that the French traveller means to speak of the same tribe as the last-named author, and that its true name is El Gharíb. But in the map drawn by M. Jomard to illustrate Caillié’s journey, the position of El Harib is even more faulty than its orthography. It detracts little from Caillié’s merit to say, that under all the circumstances of his journey his observations of the compass were worth but little, and his estimates of distance are not to be implicitly relied on. Nineteen miles a day for the average of forty-three days between Tomboktú and El Harib, and twenty-nine miles daily during the worst part of the journey, over deep and burning sands, are rates of travelling much too high for a loaded caravan. By the undue lengthening of the early part of the route, El Harib has been carried about fifty miles too far north, so that Tatta, instead of being north-west of it, according to the traveller’s text, is made to lie to the south-west. All the other bearings described are in like manner displaced. M. D’Avezac has corrected this error of latitude, but has, at the same time, unfortunately introduced a new error of longitude, and carried all his positions too far eastward.